Curfews will be broken Thursday morning

The IHSAA has released the first-round — uh, substate — pairings. These are some of the matchups and distances, courtesy of mapquest.com:

8-Man: Ventura at Preston, 225 miles (one way)

A: Lisbon at Northwood-Kensett, 190 miles

8-Man: Harmony at Lenox, 183 miles

2A: Gilbert at Cascade, 171 miles

1A: South Winneshiek at Emmetsburg, 155 miles

3A: New Hampton at DeWitt Central, 154 miles

2A: Beckman at Roland-Story, 149 miles

1A: Pekin at Maquoketa Valley, 140 miles

8-Man: Northeast Hamilton at Central City, 124 miles (a rematch of a Week Zero game, won by Central City, 70-55)

A: BGM at New London, 106 miles.

Certainly, there’s got to be a better answer. Here’s one: Take a chapter from the Illinois athletic association. Play five straight weekends, concluding with the finals the weekend after Thanksgiving. If the weather is decent, there is nothing better than outdoor playoff football on a Saturday afternoon.

10 Responses to “Curfews will be broken Thursday morning”

Yes, the distances are insane, and I agree the games should be played on weekends. In fact, I think they should be ob weekends regardless of the driving distancd. There is a reason varsity games are held on Friday nights…..However…..
Curfews are generally extended to cover returning home from school events..so no one will end up with a ticket, and they’d better all be in school on time Thursday morning.
Many of these kids stay up all hours on a regular basis just hanging, or video-gaming, or chatting on the computer or phone…and besides…
….As my father always said, it you want to play, you have to pay.

The IHSAA should have anticipated this better. Why the rush to ‘tax’ fans for more games? Are they that strapped for cash? Instead, they could have gradually raised prices (like everyone else does) for a couple of years while setting up an infrastructure to prevent this from happening.

The kids are playing more games. Perhaps the IHSAA could give these games a ‘big-game’ feel by adjusting venues. Particularly with travel of say, greater than 75-90 miles, where the greater the distance the more difficult the challenge for the traveling team (which, in this round are seeded to lose anyway).

Perhaps they should start with contacting the IIAC schools for help. Then they could work with communities that have large stadiums: Davenport-Brady Street Stadium, Cedar Rapids-Kingston Stadium (let’s play 2!) Iowa City has two schools with fields.

I’m probably over generalizing some connections but a few games from above could look something like this.

Ventura/Preston at Grinnell?
Lisbon/N-K at Wartburg, Waverly?
New Hampton/DeWitt Rock Bowl, Dubuque?
BGM/New London William Penn, Oskaloosa?
Beckman/Roland Story OR Pekin/Maq Valley at Kingston OR Coe, Cedar Rapids OR Cornell, Mt Vernon.

If I remember correctly, the IHSAA used to have a 150-mile rule for these games that I believe went out the window this year. If the distance was over 150 miles, the Association would find a neutral site.

I’m resigned to the playoff expansion. It’s not going away. But there’s got to be a better way. Personally, if it were my call and I absolutely had to have 32 teams in each class in the playoffs, I would advance all district champions, then all at-large teams would be based on OVERALL (not district) records. Some districts would have five or six qualifiers. Some might have two or three. It would eliminate the 3-6 teams advancing. After the 32 teams were identified, I would send them to quadrants and seed them 1 through 8. Some district teams would be playing each other. That would be life. Thoughts?

Manson-NW Webster to Mount Ayr, 180 miles. I worked a summer in Mount Ayr in 1989, in the middle of a drought. They had water restrictions. My landlady set times in which I could and couldn’t flush. It was a long summer.

Jeff, Have you looked at or know any statistics concerning 1st round upsets when there were only 16 teams? I did a quick check using lazystats(tm) and for 2A there was only one upset from 2005 through 2007, and that was looking at district champs and runner-ups! I like the idea of seeding teams based on schedule instead of conference standings, but why not just go with 24 and have the eight district champs getting a bye and the next sixteen having a play-in game. This would at least increase the odds of rewarding good teams from tough conferences.

I understand the need to expand, but a team should have a winning record, or at least have beaten teams with a winning record!

I think using all the games could work, you would just need a modifier to adjust and reward teams who play a decent non-district schedule. It would be a shame to encourage teams to play for the record instead of the competition.

In seeding teams, my first tie-breaker would be number of wins by ALL opponents. That would help the teams that play up in non-district play and it would help all teams from a tough district (which would win their non-district games).